An environment friendly new insulation material involving waste newsprint papers reinforced by cane stalks

Insulation is vital to most building design and aims to decrease the need for heating and cooling. This paper presents a procedure to obtain an alternative insulation material made with waste newsprint papers, cane stalks, vermiculite, perlite, zinc borax and plaster. Towards this end, waste newsprint papers were kept in water for one day until they formed dough. Then, different rates of vermiculite, perlite, and zinc borax were added to the dough. This mortar was placed in moulds of 4 × 16 × 16 cm dimensions with its own weight. In the production of the samples plaster was used as the binder. For increasing the fire resistance vermiculite and zinc borax were added to the mix. In the production of some samples 5 mm cane stalks were placed in grid forms of single and double rows and pressure was applied. After the production of the samples their unit weights, water absorption ratios, thermal and ultra sound transmission coefficients, and flexural and compressive strengths were determined. The samples produced with an additional double row of canes had the lowest thermal conductivity and ultra-sound permeability coefficients. The requirements of the standards were satisfied by the flexural and compressive strengths of all samples. Samples with both types of grids had rather low thermal conductivity coefficients. The flexural strengths of these samples were found to be higher than those of the others. These results indicate that the investigated materials can be used for thermal and ultrasonic sound insulation purposes. Furthermore, ASTM Standards' fire resistance requirements are also satisfied. Hence, the proposed product has potential as a candidate to be commercialized with further improvements in the future.